Worth Your While
by Dustbunny3
Summary: [Lost Light][One-shot][Anode/Lug] All Lug wanted to do was window shop. Unfortunately, Anode was keen to let her.


A/N: I cannot believe I forgot to cross-post this one too. And it's had a title! Better late than never, I guess.

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Lug isn't terribly alarmed when she hears the shouting or the blaster fire. Even the jostling that begins to ripple through the crowd doesn't get more than a grumble. She and Anode don't tend to frequent the most upstanding of planets, after all, and she's spotted her fair share of shadiness as she's wandered through the market. That her window shopping is going to be interrupted by some kind of police chase is neither surprising nor especially interesting except as something to tease Anode about missing.

Then her comms beep and Anode's voice comes through, _"Hey, where are you?"_

Frowning and unable to pin down the reason why, Lug answers, "Looking at crystal sculptures, like I said I'd be. Where are you?"

" _Headed your way! Get someplace I can see you, huh_?"

"I'm right in front of the booth we saw yesterday run by that Magisterian fellow."

There's a moment before Anode answers again, coinciding with a definite increase in the volume of whatever ruckus is making its way through the market. In fact, the volume seems to be increasing exponentially, as volume tends to do as its source grows closer. Uncertainty prickling through her lines, Lug glances around, mostly through the legs– and other roughly leg-equivalent appendages– of much taller market-goers. She's about to warn Anode that something is going on when Anode's voice sounds off again.

 _"Knowing where you are is a definite help,"_ she says, _"but I really do need to be able to see you."_

A frown falls over Lug's face even as she tries to roll a sense of dread off her shoulders. She looks around again, jostled by the crowd, and spots a stack of boxes beside one of the booths. A bored-looking mechanical being of a design she doesn't recognize is unpacking them, slowly. She edges closer and, when they bend away to sift through the packing inside the box they're working on, she carefully hops up onto the stack. Her plating, painstakingly polished up in hopes of convincing the market merchants to give her the time of day, glints in the sunlight.

"I–"

 _"Oh!"_ Lug hears Anode's voice in stereo but doesn't spot her right away. _"I see you! Wow, you make that shine look_ good _–"_

That's all the warning she gets before the flash of green and cream. In short order, she finds herself in Anode's arms in midair as Anode catches her and literally dives back into the crowd. She hugs Lug close to her chest, not swinging her around to her back or even giving her room to transform. Lights flash above them and it's a moment before Lug understands that they're being shot at.

"Good news," Anode chirps through a static buzz of exertion. "Our ship is ready, we've just got to pick it up. Also? We can now afford to pick it up!"

"You've been adventuring without me!" Lug blurts, not even touching the fact that she didn't know being able to afford their ship's repairs was a question. She's surprised by the hurt in her own voice.

It clearly surprises Anode, too, whose face slackens with shock before curling with mischief. The light of her optics sparkles and she holds Lug ever so slightly tighter as she shoulders their way through the crowd and down a dim-lit alley. She says, "Aww–"

"Don't you _aww_ at me," Lug snaps. She starts to cross her arms in a huff, but then quickly throws them around Anode's neck when Anode parkours over garbage and boxes and a fence that rattles like it'll drop them both. "And let me transform, would you?"

Anode throws a look back over her shoulder and grimaces, then drops into a crouch behind a dumpster. The officers– are they officers? Lug doesn't bother to ask– in pursuit are a lot bulkier than Anode and more physically limited like most organics are, but they're still plenty close enough to fire on the two of them. This is illustrated by the blasts zapping by above and around them, chipping at their meager shelter.

"I don't think you ought to be on my back just now," Anode says. Her smile is weak but warm and she arranges Lug so that she's more protected by Anode's own torso before launching out of their hiding place and darting around a corner.

"Another fine mess you've gotten us into," Lug grumbles into Anode's chest. A blast passes close enough that she feels the heat against the back of her helm and she cringes closer. "What were you thinking going off on your own?" Hurt and concern bleed static into her words, but she commends how irate she manages to sound still.

"I was thinking," Anode says around a grunt as she lands poorly on the other side of a heap of some organic trash and keeps going, "that you might like to enjoy your shopping trip."

Lug opens her mouth and snaps it shut. When she opens it again a moment later, a long, low garble of noise which says everything at once and nothing at all comes out. It bounces off the walls around them and she catches one of their pursuers commenting that they think they might've hit "the puny one." She ignores it, grumbling nonsense and refusing to look at Anode. It's ridiculous, utterly ridiculous that Anode would go into a dangerous situation without backup so that Lug can admire items she has no hope of affording, and that's half the reason Lug knows that she's telling the truth.

"You're ridiculous," Lug informs her. She lets out an _oof_ when Anode skids around a corner; daring to peek over Anode's shoulder, she sees that the– cops? guards? enforcers? Whoever Anode's gone and got herself on the wrong side of, they're closer. She grunts and shoves at Anode's chest. "Now let me transform– you can't maneuver properly when you're carrying me like this."

There's a moment that it seems Anode will refuse; she frowns down at Lug and her arms tighten. But then she's darting back out of the alleyways and into another crowded market street and as she does, she readjusts her hold and swings Lug around to her back. Lug transforms as she goes, so familiar with this routine that she could perform it in the midst of recharge. Anode adjusts for her just as certainly, not so much as a moment's hesitation in her steps. She pets down Lug's straps and says nothing about the plating that adjusts just to pinch her fingertips. The probably-cops have stopped firing now that they're back in the thick of the crowd and are falling ever further behind.

"Shot at and I didn't even do anything," Lug mutters mostly– but only mostly– for show as she settles in for the dash to their sorry ride off the planet. "The things I put up with for you."

"Oh, you know I make everything worth it," Anode says far too cheerfully as she dances through the crowd. The sounds of their pursuers are fading in the distance and they haven't got far to go before they reach the shop where they left their ship for repairs. She rushes by too close to a booth and upsets the display, hurrying off again with the keeper shouting after them. She tosses something over her shoulder that Lug opens a compartment to catch automatically– it's a set of mood pipes, something she spotted when they found the market, because why not while they're at it, she supposes. The grin is audible in Anode's voice when she all but sings, "Admit it!"

Lug audibly clicks off her vocalizer, refusing to do so– at least out loud.


End file.
